Donald Trump and the Republican Party have made white supremacy their core issue in the campaign, and the President threatens to stay in office even if he loses. He's made himself a threat to democracy. In the meantime, the COVID-19 pandemic spreads unabated. There is no national plan to confront it. How could this be happening?
This is the third in a series on the pandemic, featuring three intersecting foci: the spread of COVID-19, the Black Lives Matter confrontation with racism, and the presidential campaign leading up to a decision on election day, the third of November, 2020. Their explosive intersection has turned crazy!
While a creator god lacks a past, could an aspirational deity have a future? If we succeed over time in actualizing our finest attributes, would a god fashioned on our late example be worthy of its divinity? Would it be so terrible if human perfection someday attains the distinction of divinity in the minds of successor life forms when we go extinct?
Introduction I’ve begun attending monthly meetings of Socrates Café at the South Portland Library. Socrates Café is a gathering of citizens who get together by choice to discuss the big questions of life. Methods drawn from the book, Socrates Café, written by the program’s founder, Christopher Phillips, are used to guide discussion. The example of... Continue Reading →
I chose this title from among others because something perverse, charming, and strange seemed to be going on in these pleasant interludes with Tim Harrell, and I couldn't figure out what that was, and so, I gave up and went with the vanilla option! ‘Tim the Voyeur’ was enticing, but slanderous. ‘Spying' or ‘Surveilling with... Continue Reading →
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in a January 2nd speech at Archbishop Rummel High School in Metairie, Louisiana, told the audience that the constitution does not require government to be neutral between religion and non-religion. The separation clause of the First Amendment prevents government from favoring a particular faith, that is true, but it is... Continue Reading →
After reading the description of my recently published book, Abdication: God Steps Down for Good, people occasionally inquire whether I’m an atheist. I tell them that I’m basically agnostic and a hopeful theist. It would be wonderful, to my way of thinking, if a convivial, non-dictatorial God existed. It’s a lonely world out there in... Continue Reading →
In a recent blog essay entitled God and War, two proposals were advanced to get God out of the war business. These proposals join six others in the book Abdication: God Steps Down for Good to form a program directed at this same goal. In the interest of complete information and full understanding, the eight... Continue Reading →
President Obama’s eulogy for Clementa Pinckney—massacred Pastor of Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina—was one of the finest I’ve heard, and deserves standing among the most important speeches in our history. Think about his problem for a moment. What could he say to the wife, daughters, extended family, colleagues, and co-religionists of a Pastor... Continue Reading →
In an earlier blog essay, Religion and the Credibility of Science, I argued that religion and science are fundamentally opposed to each other. In the book Abdication: God Steps Down for Good, I make the same claim, but with a twist, namely that the two, while antagonistic, are also allies of one another! How can that... Continue Reading →
